Prognosticating…
Bernie disrupted Democrats. There are 204 candidates running now, and they are all taking planks from Bernie.
But…there’s Bernie.
So…why vote for an Imitation Bernie when there’s Bernie?
The only reason to do that is that you think Bernie is Too Radical, and you want Bernie Lite because you fear Bernie is too radical. Or you like the Radical, but think somebody else is a better Bernie than Bernie is.
Of the Bernie Lite candidates, Warren has the best credentials. That is to say that every other candidate has moved Left from their own historical record. Warren is who she is. Bernie Lite. Everyone else is pretending to be Warren, basically. Warren is who she is…she’s never faked it. She is a liberal Democrat. Booker, Harris, Gillebrand, and the other 199 candidates are all pretending to be liberal Democrats, but all of them have voting records that prove they aren’t, or just “saw the light.” So there is Bernie, and everybody competing to compete against Bernie. And of all of those, I think Warren has the most street cred.
But she isn’t going to light a fire under enough people, though. She’s professorial…which I don’t care about, but other people do. She will fire up a bunch of women who still have their knickers in a twist because they think Bernie and the Male Bastards killed off St. Hillary, but that just isn’t going to be enough, imo. She will contend, but the passionate, get-off-the-butt, door-to-door passion is still behind Bernie. It just is.
Harris is formidable. I’d hire her as my personal lawyer in a second. She’s smart, and tough as nails. But her record is compromised, and she and Warren will split the women vote for long enough for Sanders to take the lead in delegates.
Biden can screw it all up if he enters, but I think the energy of the Democrat party has moved away from the Old Answers, and Biden epitomizes that. His opportunity was 2016, and he sat it out.
Bernie already did this. He learned from his previous run, and he just doesn’t get drawn into the bullshit stuff. He stays on message. And they aren’t going to be able to dig up anything on him that is new. He already weathered the only semi-scandal they could find about his wife, and I just don’t think dirt will stick to him. They can attack him on Age, but he could kick Trump’s ass in a one-on-one athletic match of any kind, so there just isn’t anything there that is going to stick, I don’t think.
I think he has to be the favorite for the nomination in spite of the pissed-off-Hillary types. There will be noise. There will be ugliness. But he has the passion and the numbers, I believe.
So I think Bernie Sanders…who is SO far to the Left that he is practically Dwight Eisenhower…is the likely nominee.
One other thing. I have noticed a Hegelian dialectic with presidents. Seems to me Americans tend to vote for a President who is strong where the previous president was weak. Trump’s biggest apparent weakness is he is completely full of shit. I think everybody sees that. Bernie has authenticity up the wazoo. He is constitutionally unable to lie. He has been consistent for 40 years, or more. He’s just honest. If nothing else. And I think that’s where voters will ultimate lean.
